


There's No Room for the Little People

by tasibi



Series: It's 3 AM again [20]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Blood, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Physical Disability, Titans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:07:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27482458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tasibi/pseuds/tasibi
Summary: Ediline Schmidt was predicted to die early.(a character study on a girl living in Shiganshina.)
Relationships: Original Female Character & The Contemplation of Death
Series: It's 3 AM again [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/793599
Kudos: 2





	There's No Room for the Little People

**Author's Note:**

> Ik this is very niche considering the aot Fandom is pretty well known for having a surprising amount of modern aus. So canonverse is hard enough to find. But a canonverse with an OFC as the main character and no slash or pairs? Yeah... Dont know if anyone will read it but hey! I really enjoyed writing is so why not.
> 
> I should probably finish my essay and update my other fic but yknow >.>

* * *

Ediline Schmidt was born into this world with a trembling hand. She, like the many newborns before and after her, had clutched tightly to the warm hand that she was grasped in. Her body so _tiny_ \- so frail and weak that it was dwarfed by the limb of the doctor that had delivered her.

She was born into this world too early to have lasted as long as she did-the doctors had told her parents. "You must understand, it may seem okay for now, but your daughter should not have been able to be successfully delivered this early on."

And so, she took on every day as a blessing. Each time she took a rattling breath, her chest aching from the strain; she would unconsciously hold her breath, just waiting for the wheezing hiss of her lungs not expanding. The noise that would accompany her to her untimely death.   
Looking at Ediline, you would not guess she was a child forged in weak cardboard with a heart of lead and eyes a hazy glass. She was unremarkable, and carried the same features as her mother did, and her father's mother did, and so forth. What unremarkable meant, she could not say. It wasn't as if her thoughts and opinions were great enough to garner bullying, or that she was able to grasp some form of concept or be elite in a certain skill. In a way, she was almost glad for her quivering hand; it gave her a perpetual weakness that reminded her of the fragility of the creaking bones that lay under her skin- the splinter of fire wood enough to shake her very core as her heart thumped to an invisible drum.

She was one of the ones that would accomplish nothing significant enough to be remembered. All she could hope to do was right down her thought in a small, paper bound journal. The likes of which she struggled with as her hand would be drenched in ink and her shaky handwriting was barely legible-but still. She hoped someone (please, anyone) would take a moment to briefly gaze over her life's work when she was gone. To say anything to her. To form an opinion of her.

Ediline Schmidt was outside at that moment; the air in their underground home grew too heavy for her to bear. Her tiny journal was tucked between her pillowcases (safe and sound.) As young as she was, she sat down quietly, observing from the sidelines to something she could never grasp. What would it be like, to have that sense of unlimited capability? To be so proficient, so talented, that you would be recognized?   
No. She knew that even if she was not given the spine of a coward there would be no change. Her life would be nondescript, almost following a script as if there was a play and she the supporting ensamble.   
  
A crackle of thunder- shrieks and cries filled the air as the long-forgotten thumbing of giant humanlike beasts trodded through Shiganshina. Their daunting figures almost overcomponsating for their naive faces and twisted proportion.   
  
_Oh. I see._

  
Another shriek and she backed up. Despite her fatigue, she tried to run, but backed up into a wall. Her dress, hand down and passed down for generations, torn and burnt from the blood that now stained the streets.   
  
_Is this how I'll die?_  
  
She watched as a kind neighbor was picked up by her head and squashed.   
  
_At least there won't be a body to bury._  
As someone who had no real chance at life, it ached her to have to go this way. The chances of her making it was slim, but she wanted to go anyway. Ediline wanted to live, she wanted to eat a variety of dishes and see the great plains her father's family owned in Sina. She wanted to grasp a world that was too large for her tiny figure. She was but a puppet, and without her strings she would fall.   
  
" _Ediline! Save me- oh God. Please, someone, please spare-"_ the neighbors boy was eaten. She couldn't feel her body for once. It was as if her mind had departed, leaving only a shell of dissociation.   
  
The boys hands- the ones that were outstretched to her, pleading for help, for anything, God- fell in her path. She kicked them aside in a hurry and winced; from the guilt or from the burning of the titan blood she could not say.   
  
The same titan lept at her, crushing her ribs and legs. She attempted to knock her hands into its fist, but it was futile. She pushed and shoved with all her might, but it's grip would not budge.   
The titan raised her up to it's face, and, almost as if mocking her, began to open its palm. She lay there, weak and crumbled and covered in blood. Her small figure standing out against the outlandishly large hand. Her breath rattling and her hands balled in fists even though she trembled--scared beyond what she could believe was real.   
  
The titan opened its mouth and swallowed her whole.   
  
_No, please._  
  
The heat of its throat clogged her throat and her ribs ached even more.   
  
_I want to live, please_  
  
 _I have so much I haven't done yet. Why. Why today? If I had known today was my last, I would've done so much more._  
  
And, like the doctors and her family predicted, her body was too weak.   
Yet, in those odds, she landed in the stomach. Swallowed whole and still alive, she grasped at the lining and shrieked as the acidic fluid burned her clothes and skin and hands--her hands and, oh God Oh-

 _It hurts... Mom, it hurts.._  
  
But, like she had thought, her body gave out. Allowing her the more peaceful death of choking on blood rather than the slow and agonizing one of burning in the acidic fluid of the titans sins. Ediline was born into this world and died early, like they all said she would.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Her journal was found many, many years later by a Survey Corps member. However, with the mission at hand to retrieve journals with far more value, all the boy did was flip open the first page. Her hours of toiling over her memoir were never read, never touched. Her name, like many, many others on That Day, were lost.   
  
There's no room for the little people in history.   
  


**Author's Note:**

> :P


End file.
